“Alright.”
Chao’er said.
“I can use the Soul Binding Threads to lock her soon-to-scatter soul, and freeze her physical body with Profound Yin Demonic Qi, putting her in a state of suspended slumber between life and death. That way, she can’t threaten me… but she’s still alive, what do you think?”
Shen Mo’s heart twitched violently, but he had no other choice.
At least, with her soul intact and her body unrotted, there remained a sliver of faint hope.
He nodded.
“Deal!” Chao’er clapped her hands happily.
Her hands swiftly formed several hand seals before her chest.
Dark purple Demonic Qi surged from around her, condensing into several black threads as fine as strands of hair.
“Go.”
She let out a soft cry, and those Soul Threads suddenly drilled into Su Wan’er’s brow, heart area, and several other vital points!
At the same time, her right hand reached toward Su Wan’er’s chest, her palm covering the wound that her own hand had pierced through.
Her five fingers spread slightly, fingertips sinking into the grayish-blue flesh at the wound’s edge.
A Demonic Qi completely different from before surged from her palm.
It was gentle.
Warm, like someone suddenly taking your hand after you’d walked through the deep winter snow for a very, very long time.
That Demonic Qi slowly, bit by bit, pushed back the yin-cold force that had frozen her vitality.
Su Wan’er’s body convulsed violently.
Black blood welled up from her throat, her eyelashes trembling slightly, like a frostbitten butterfly slowly regaining sensation under the sun.
The wound remained, but the grayish-blue at its edges had mostly receded, leaving only a faint ring of pale gray.
Her heartbeat had also recovered—slow, but every beat was solid.
“Blood Orchid.” She turned her head and called into the shadows.
A woman clad in blood-red form-fitting combat attire, with a cold, striking face and a yin-cold aura no weaker than a Nascent Soul cultivator’s, appeared silently at her side, dropping to one knee: “Old Ancestor.”
“Take her. Return to the Soul Severing Abyss.”
Chao’er—or rather, the Nan Gong Old Ancestor—gave the order indifferently, pointing at the unconscious Su Wan’er.
“Yes.” Blood Orchid rose, smoothly taking Su Wan’er from Shen Mo’s arms and supporting her carefully.
They stepped into the spatial rift.
Shen Mo felt the world spin violently, as if he’d been thrown into a raging vortex.
The next second, solid ground met his feet.
The suffocating spatial tearing sensation vanished abruptly.
The light was dim, illuminated only by phosphorous ore embedded in the jagged stone walls, glowing with faint green or ghastly white light, casting the massive underground space in flickering, eerie shadows.
This was a naturally formed cavern deep beneath the earth, later excavated and expanded with crude, bizarre craftsmanship.
“We welcome the Old Ancestor back to the palace!”
A hoarse, low female voice, laced with both fawning and fear, rang out ahead.
Shen Mo barely lifted his head to see a woman in form-fitting dark red leather armor—tall and curvaceous, with a vicious scar running from her brow bone down to the corner of her mouth—kneeling on one knee several yards away.
The woman’s gaze at Chao’er was filled with fanaticism and reverence, and when she glanced at Shen Mo behind her, a flicker of surprise passed through her eyes before she quickly lowered her head.
Shen Mo’s heart ran cold.
So this demonic soul inhabiting Chao’er’s body held an extremely high status here.
“Mhm.” Chao’er responded casually, with none of a young girl’s coyness—only the cold indifference of one in power.
She raised her small hand, her icy fingertips brushing Shen Mo’s pale cheek, her gaze burning as she stared at him.
“Now, isn’t it time for Master’s Husband to… keep me company?”
“My sleeping quarters are just ahead.”
She pointed toward the other side of the cavern, where a wider passage flanked by torch stands of ferocious beast bones stood.
“This one… has run out of patience.”
Shen Mo jerked his face away, grinding his teeth.
“No! At least wait until she’s settled, until I’m sure she’s really fine… And, I-I’m not ready yet…”
“Ready?” Chao’er blinked, then burst into giggling laughter.
“Master’s Husband, what do you need to prepare for? Your whole person, from the inside out, from soul to body, already belongs to this one. This one can take you whenever she wants.”
Her tone gradually cooled, the innocence fading from her eyes.
“This one’s patience is limited, Master’s Husband. Don’t test this one’s bottom line. Don’t forget—that woman’s life and death rest entirely in this one’s hands.”
Shen Mo looked at the familiar yet unfamiliar face of Chao’er before him, and a question rose uncontrollably in his heart.
“You…” He stared hard into her eyes, trying to discern something from those fathomless dark purple depths.
“Are you Chao’er, or the Nan Gong Old Ancestor? Or has Chao’er completely disappeared?”
The question made her pause.
The irritation on her face eased slightly.
She released her grip on Shen Mo’s chin, stepped back half a pace, crossed her arms, and tilted her head to study him.
“Chao’er? Nan Gong Jin?” She repeated the two names softly, a meaningful smile curling at the corner of her mouth. “There’s no harm in telling you.”
She paced a couple of steps, her skirts flowing with a sheen under the dim light.
“This body originally belonged to a little girl named Chao’er. Her soul was pure, yet carried a rare, morbid obsession with a certain person—like a layer of sweet, fragile sugar coating, wrapping seductive yin energy within… An excellent vessel, and delicious nourishment.”
Her voice was calm, as if telling a story unrelated to herself.
“And Nan Gong Jin,” she said the name with a flat tone, like mentioning an acquaintance known for a long time but not particularly close.
“The foremost figure of the Demon Path a thousand years ago, at Spirit Severing Stage Perfection, hunted down by the Seven Righteous Sects in a joint siege at Fallen Immortal Ridge. Her physical body was destroyed, her soul sealed in the deepest depths of the Demon Abyss—for a thousand years.”
She paused, lifted her head, and met Shen Mo’s eyes. “Until a little girl, pushed off the Demon Abyss by her own sect members, landed on her seal.”
Shen Mo said nothing.
The light cast her shadow against the stone wall behind her.
The shadow kept shifting shapes—now the slender silhouette of a young girl, now the outline of another woman, taller, more… mature.
“That little girl was dying. The Yin Sha Qi at the bottom of the Demon Abyss was corroding her meridians. Her Spiritual Power was dispersing, her Spirit Soul unstable.”
“Nan Gong Jin asked her: Do you want to live? She said yes. Nan Gong Jin asked her: Living comes at a price—are you willing? She said yes. Nan Gong Jin asked her: From now on, your life won’t be entirely yours—do you accept? She said she accepted.”
“So now,” Shen Mo’s voice broke the silence, “who stands before me? Chao’er? Or Nan Gong Jin?”
Chao’er tilted her head.
She had made this gesture countless times, each time like a curious little beast.
But now, under the greenish light, it suddenly carried an entirely different meaning—as if two souls within the same shell had made the gesture simultaneously.
Half innocence, half ancient weariness.
Half coaxing, half scrutiny.
“Both,” she said. “And neither.”
“At first, Nan Gong Jin wanted to erase Chao’er’s consciousness and completely take over this body. But this little girl’s obsession proved far more tenacious than expected. Especially her twisted fixation on you—it actually resonated with the memory fragments in Nan Gong’s remnant soul.”
“So we didn’t become a simple devourer and devoured.”
“Chao’er is me, and Nan Gong Jin is also me.” Her fingertip traced slowly along Shen Mo’s collarbone, slid past the side of his neck, and stopped at his pulsing heartbeat. “Two broken things, melted into one new whole. I in you, you in me.”
“You could say the one standing before you now is both Chao’er and Nan Gong Jin. We share this body, share most memories and perceptions, and even… share certain emotions.”
She paused, a flicker of chaos and struggle passing through her eyes, quickly drowned by deeper shades of dark purple.
“Of course, the fusion isn’t perfect. Occasionally… under extreme emotions, or when facing certain specific triggers, the overly intense obsession from Chao’er’s part briefly takes the upper hand, making behavior lean more toward that little girl.”
“But it doesn’t matter. No matter who temporarily takes the lead, the ultimate goal and desire… are the same.”
“For example…” She closed in on Shen Mo again, her finger tracing lightly across his chest. “To have you, to possess you, to make you belong to me alone forever.”
“Like now—”
She didn’t finish.
Because she had already risen onto her tiptoes.
Shen Mo dodged.
Chao’er’s lips brushed past the corner of his mouth, landing on his cheek.
Her motion stopped.
Her heels slowly, bit by bit, settled back to the ground.
When she looked up, the dark red light in her eyes had receded somewhat, revealing the familiar, glossy black almond-shaped eyes beneath.
“Why dodge?”
Her voice was soft, carrying genuine bewilderment. “Master’s Husband promised—willingly coming with me, from now on looking only at me, thinking only of me, doing whatever I want. Master’s Husband said it himself.”
Shen Mo lowered his gaze to look at her.
The greenish light cast from the side split Chao’er’s face into light and shadow.
One half was the girl in the light—eyes slightly red, lips pouting, as if being coy. The other half was the silhouette in shadow—deep-set eye sockets, sharp jawline, like a woman who had lived a very long time.
“What I promised was Chao’er,” he said.
Chao’er’s pupils contracted slightly.
“Not Nan Gong Jin,” Shen Mo said calmly.
“I agreed to go with Chao’er because Chao’er is Chao’er—my disciple that I raised with my own hands, the child whose fingers froze from practicing calligraphy and whose hands I’d wrap in my palms to warm, the little girl who’d wait for me at the mountain peak every time I returned, who’d run over and shout ‘Master’s home!’ when she saw me.”
His voice paused.
“Who is Nan Gong Jin? I don’t know her.”
In the shadows, that dense mass of darkness trembled violently.
The greenish flame suddenly leaped higher, bathing the world in a sickly green glow.
The expression on Chao’er’s face belonging to the girl half didn’t change, but the shadow on the stone wall behind her did.
That shadow tilted its head slightly, as if peering at the man before it across the boundary between life and death.
“You don’t know me.” Chao’er’s lips moved, but the voice that emerged had changed—still her voice, yet the intonation, the rhythm, even the placement of breath pauses, seemed to belong to someone else entirely.
Slower, deeper, carrying a composure honed by vast stretches of time.
“But I know you.”